One entrant in this year's presidential race is spanning his own digital divide, using the latest in real-time computer animation to emerge as the first virtual candidate. Uncle Duke, the Doonesbury comic strip character seen in 1,400 newspapers worldwide, has grown from a flat, cigarette-holder puffing cartoon into the three-dimensional, political trash-talking star of his own Web site (www.duke2000.com), complete with virtual smoke. The animation was created by Dotcomix, a San Francisco-based Internet studio. For virtual Duke, an actor wears a body suit with motion-capture detectors while a puppeteer manipulates facial expressions. Says executive producer Buzz Hayes: "We could apply the same technology to Bush and Gore-to make them more animated, too."

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